Almost Heaven

by Judith McNaught

  “That blackguard!” Bentner spat. “The sound of his name makes my knuckles ache for a poke at him!” For emphasis, he shook his fist.

  “It has the same effect on me,” Alex admitted wryly. “That’s as far as we’ve planned.”

  He stood up to leave, patted Alexandra’s shoulder, and blithely informed the elderly noblewoman who terrified half the ton with her stony hauteur, and who was already glowering at him for his familiarity with Alex, “You’ve got yourself a fine girl here, your grace. We’ve known Miss Alex since she was a girl chasin’ frogs at our pond with Miss Elizabeth.”

  The dowager did not reply. She sat in frigid silence, and only her eyes moved, following his progress out the door.

  “Alexandra.” she said awfully, but Alex laughed and held up her hand. “Don’t berate me for familiarity with the servants, I beg you, Grandmama. I cannot change, and it only upsets you. Besides, you were about to tell me something that seemed important when Bentner arrived.”

  Diverted from her ire at indecorous servants, the dowager said severely, “You were so concerned in the salon that we not keep Elizabeth in an agony of doubt in here that you gave me no time to discuss some pertinent facts that may cause you some grave concern—that is, if you aren’t already aware of them.”

  “What facts?”

  “Have you seen the newspaper today?”

  “Not yet. Why?”

  “According to the Times and the Gazette, Stanhope himself is here in London and has just affirmed Ian Thornton as his grandson and legal heir. Of course, it’s been whispered for years that Thornton is his grandson, but only a few knew it for a fact.”

  “I had no idea,” Alex said absently, thinking how grossly unfair it was that the unprincipled libertine who’d brought so much unhappiness into Elizabeth’s life should be enjoying such good fortune at the same moment Elizabeth’s future looked so bleak. “I never heard of him until six weeks ago, when we returned from our trip and someone mentioned his name in connection with the scandal over Elizabeth.”

  “That’s hardly surprising. Prior to this past year he was rarely mentioned in polite drawing rooms. You and Jordan left on your trip before the scandal over Elizabeth occurred, so there’s no reason you would have heard of him in connection with that, either.”

  “How could such a wretched blackguard convince someone to legitimize him as his heir?” Alex said angrily.

  “I daresay he didn’t need to be ‘legitimized,’ if I take your meaning. He is Stanhope’s natural and legitimate grandson. Your husband told me that in confidence years ago. I also know,” she added meaningfully, “that Jordan is one of the very few people to whom Thornton has ever admitted it.”

  Alexandra’s feeling of disaster increased, and she slowly put her teacup back in the saucer. “Jordan?” she repeated in an alarmed voice. “Why on earth would a scoundrel like that have confided in Jordan, of all people?”

  “As you well know, Alexandra,” the duchess said bluntly, “your husband did not always live a life that was above reproach. He and Thornton ran with much the same crowd in their wilder days—gaming and drinking and doing whatever debauched things men do. It was this friendship of theirs that I feared you might not know of.”

  Alex closed her eyes in misery. “I was counting on Jordan’s support to help us launch Elizabeth tonight. I’ve written to him explaining how dreadfully Elizabeth was treated by the most unspeakable cad alive, but I didn’t mention his name. I never imagined Jordan would know of Ian Thornton, let alone be acquainted with such a person. I was so certain, “she added heavily, “that if he met Elizabeth, he would do everything in his power to help put the right face on things tonight.”

  Reaching across the settee, the dowager squeezed her hand and said with a gruff smile, “We both know that Jordan would give you his full support if you wished to stand against foe or friend, my dear. However, in this instance you may not have his unconditional empathy when he finds out who the ‘unspeakable cad’ is. It is that which I wished to warn you about.”

  “Elizabeth mustn’t know of this,” Alex said fiercely. “She’ll be so uneasy around Jordan—and I couldn’t blame her. There is simply no justice in life!” she added, glowering at the unopened issue of the Times lying on the side table. “If there were, that—that despoiler of innocents would never be a marquess now, while Elizabeth has to be afraid to show her face in society. I don’t suppose there’s the slightest chance,” she added hopefully, “that he didn’t get a shilling or a piece of property with the title? I could endure it better if he were still a penniless Scots cottager or a down-at-the-heel gambler.”

  The duchess snorted indelicately. “There’s no chance of that, my dear, and if that’s what Elizabeth believes he is, she’s been duped.”

  “I don’t think I want to hear this,” Alex said with an angry sigh. “No, I have to know. Tell me, please.”

  “There’s little to tell,” the dowager said, reaching for her gloves and starting to draw them on. “Shortly after the scandal with Elizabeth, Thornton vanished. Then, less than a year ago, someone—whose name was not divulged for a long time—bought that splendid estate in Tilshire, named it Montmayne, and began renovations, with an army of carpenters employed to do the work. A few months later a magnificent town house in Brook Street was sold—again to an ‘undivulged purchaser.’ Massive renovations began the next week on it, too. Society was all agog, wondering who the owner was, and a few months ago Ian Thornton drew up in front of number eleven Upper Brook Street and walked into the house. Two years ago the rumor was that Thornton was a gambler and no more, and he was assuredly persona non grata in most respectable homes. Today, however, I have the sad task of telling you, he’s said to be richer than Croesus, and he’s welcome in almost any drawing room he cares to set foot in—not that he cares to very often, fortunately.” Standing up to leave, she finished in a dire voice, “You may as well face the rest of it now, because you’ll have to face it this evening.”

  “What do you mean?” Alex asked, wearily arising.

  “I mean that Elizabeth’s prospects for success tonight were drastically reduced by Stanhope’s announcement this morning.”

  “Why?”

  “The reason is simple: Now that Thornton has a title to go with his wealth, what happened between him and Elizabeth will be overlooked by the ton as a ‘gentleman’s sport,’ but it will continue to stain her reputation. And there’s one more thing,” she added in her most dire tone yet.

  “I’m not certain I can bear it. What is it?”

  “I,” her grace announced, “do not have a good feeling about this evening!”

  Neither did Alex at that moment. “Tony has agreed to escort Elizabeth tonight, and Sally is in accord,” she said idly, referring to her brother-in-law and his wife, who was still at home in the country. “I wish, though, her escort was someone else—an eligible bachelor above reproach— someone everyone looks up to, or better yet fears. Roddy Carstairs would have been the perfect one. I’ve sent him an urgent message to present himself to me here at his earliest convenience, but he is not expected back until tonight or tomorrow. He would be the perfect one, if I could convince him to do it. Why, most people in society positively tremble in fear of his cutting remarks.”

  “They tremble in fear of me,” said the dowager with pride.

  “Yes, I know,” Alex said with a wan smile. “No one will dare to give Elizabeth the cut direct in front of you, but Roddy might be able to terrify everyone into actually accepting her.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. When and where are we all to gather tonight for this ill-fated debacle?”

  Alex rolled her eyes and smiled reassuringly. “We’ll leave from here at ten-thirty. I asked Jordan to meet us at the Willingtons’ receiving line so that we can all go down to the ballroom together.”

  20

  At eight-thirty that night Ian stood on the steps outside Elizabeth’s uncle’s town house suppressing an almost overwhelming desire to murd
er Elizabeth’s butler, who seemed to be inexplicably fighting down the impulse to do bodily injury to Ian. “I will ask you again, in case you misunderstood me the last time,” Ian enunciated in a silky, ominous tone that made ordinary men blanch. “Where is your mistress?”

  Bentner didn’t change color by so much as a shade. “Out!” he informed the man who’d ruined his young mistress’s life and had now appeared on her doorstep, unexpected and uninvited, no doubt to try to ruin it again, when she was at this very moment attending her first ball in years and trying bravely to live down the gossip he had caused.

  “She is out, but you do not know where she is?”

  “I did not say so, did I?”

  “Then where is she?”

  “That is for me to know and you to ponder.”

  In the last several days Ian had been forced to do a great many unpleasant things, including riding across half of England, dealing with Christina’s irate father, and finally dealing with Elizabeth’s repugnant uncle, who had driven a bargain that still infuriated him. Ian had magnanimously declined her dowry as soon as the discussions began. Her uncle, however, had the finely honed bargaining instincts of a camel trader, and he immediately sensed Ian’s determination to do whatever was necessary to get Julius’s name on a betrothal contract. As a result, Ian was the first man to his knowledge who had ever been put in the position of purchasing his future wife for a ransom of £150,000.

  Once he’d finished that repugnant ordeal he’d ridden off to Montmayne, where he’d stopped only long enough to switch his horse for a coach and get his valet out of bed. Then he’d charged off to London, stopped at his town house to bathe and change, and gone straight to the address Julius Cameron had given him. Now, after all that, Ian was not only confronted by Elizabeth’s absence, he was confronted by the most insolent servant he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. In angry silence he turned and walked down the steps. Behind him the door slammed shut with a thundering crash, and Ian paused a moment to turn back and contemplate the pleasure he was going to have when he sacked the butler tomorrow.

  He climbed into his coach and instructed his driver to turn the horses back to his house in Upper Brook Street, and there he alighted. His own butler opened the door with proper respect, and Ian strode past him, scowling and restless. He was halfway up the staircase when he decided his evening would pass more quickly if he spent it somewhere other than here, contemplating the rebellion he’d probably face in Elizabeth tomorrow.

  Twenty-five minutes later he emerged from the town house formally attired for an evening of faro, and instructed his coachman to take him to the Blackmore. He was still scowling when he strode into the dimly lit, exclusive gentlemen’s club where he had gambled at high stakes for years. “Good evening, my lord,” the head footman intoned, and Ian nodded curtly, suppressing a grimace at the obsequious use of “my lord.”

  The card room was elegantly appointed and well populated by the crème de la crème of society who preferred straight gambling to the gossip that all too often made White’s a dead bore, and by less illustrious but equally wealthy gentlemen who preferred to play for only the very high stakes that were required at the Blackmore. Pausing at the entrance to the card room, Ian started to leave and head for the faro room when a laughing voice remarked from his immediate left, “For a man who’s just inherited a small empire, Ian, you have a remarkably sour expression on your face. Would you care to join me for a drink and a few hands of cards, my lord?”

  An ironic smile twisted Ian’s lips as he turned to acknowledge one of the few aristocrats he respected and regarded as a friend. “Certainly,” he mocked, “Your Grace.”

  Jordan Townsende laughed. “It gets a little tedious, does it not?”

  Grinning, the two men shook hands and sat down. Since Jordan had also just arrived at the club, they had to wait for a table. When they were seated a few minutes later they enjoyed a drink together, caught up on events of the past year and a half, and then got down to the more serious and pleasurable occupation of gaming, combined with desultory conversation. Normally the gaming would have been a pleasurable occupation, but tonight Ian was preoccupied, and every man who walked by the table felt it incumbent to pause and talk to one or both of them.

  “It’s our long absence from the city that makes us so popular,” Jordan joked, tossing chips into the center of the table.

  Ian scarcely heard him. His mind was on Elizabeth, who had been at the mercy of her loathsome uncle for two years. The man had bartered his own flesh and blood—and Ian was the purchaser. It wasn’t true, of course, but he had an uneasy feeling Elizabeth would see it that way as soon as she discovered what had been done without her knowledge or consent. In Scotland she’d drawn a gun on him. In London he wouldn’t blame her if she fired it. He was toying with the idea of trying to court her for a few days before he told her they were already betrothed, and simultaneously wondering if she was going to hate the idea of marrying him. Belhaven might be a repulsive toad, but Ian had grievously and repeatedly wronged her. “I don’t mean to criticize your strategy, my friend”—Jordan’s drawl drew Ian’s wandering attention—“but you have just wagered £1,000 on what appears to be a pair of absolutely nothing.”

  Ian glanced down at the hand he’d just turned over and actually felt a flush of embarrassment steal up his neck. “I have something on my mind,” he explained.

  “Whatever it is, it is assuredly not cards. Either that or you’ve lost your famous touch.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Ian said absently, stretching out his long legs and crossing them at the ankles.

  “Do you want to play another hand?”

  “I don’t think I can afford it,” Ian joked wearily.

  Glancing over his shoulder, Jordan nodded to a footman to bring two more drinks to their table, then he shoved the cards aside. Leaning back in his chair, he stretched his own legs out, and the two men regarded each other, a portrait of indolent, masculine camaraderie. “I have time for only one drink,” Jordan said, glancing at the ormolu clock on the opposite wall. “I’ve promised Alexandra to stand at her side at a ball tonight and beam approvingly at a friend of hers.” Whenever Jordan mentioned his wife’s name, Ian noted with amusement, the other man’s entire expression softened.

  “Care to join us?”

  Ian shook his head and accepted his drink from the footman. “It sounds boring as hell.”

  “I don’t think it’ll be boring, precisely. My wife has taken it upon herself to defy the entire ton and sponsor the girl back into the ranks. Based on some of the things Alexandra said in her note, that will be no mean feat.”

  “Why is that?” Ian inquired with more courtesy than interest.

  Jordan sighed and leaned his head back, weary from the hours he’d been working for the last several weeks and unexcited at the prospect of dancing attendance on a damsel in distress—one he’d never set eyes on. “The girl fell into the clutches of some man two years ago, and an ugly scandal ensued.”

  Thinking of Elizabeth and himself, Ian said casually, “That’s not an uncommon occurrence, evidently.”

  “From what Alex wrote me, it seems this case is rather extreme.”

  “In what way?”

  “For one thing, there’s every chance the young woman will get the cut direct tonight from half the ton—and that’s the half that will be willing to acknowledge her. Alex has retaliated by calling in the heavy guns—my grandmother, to be exact, and Tony and myself, to a lesser degree. The object is to try to brave it out, but I don’t envy the girl. Unless I miss my guess, she’s going to be flayed alive by the wagging tongues tonight. Whatever the bastard did,” Jordan finished, downing his drink and starting to straighten in his chair, “it was damaging as hell. The girl—who’s purported to be incredibly beautiful, by the way—has been a social outcast for nearly two years.”

  Ian stiffened, his glass arrested partway to his mouth, his sharpened gaze on Jordan, who was already starting t
o rise. “Who’s the girl?” he demanded tautly.

  “Elizabeth Cameron.”

  “Oh, Christ!” Ian exploded, surging out of his chair and snatching up his evening jacket. “Where are they?”

  “At the Willingtons’. Why?”

  “Because,” Ian bit out, impatiently shrugging into his jacket and tugging the frilled cuffs of his shirt into place, “I’m the bastard who did it.”

  An indescribable expression flashed across the Duke of Hawthorne’s face as he, too, pulled on his evening jacket. “You are the man Alexandra described in her note as an ‘unspeakable cad, vile libertine,’ and ‘despoiler of innocents’?”

  “I’m all that and more,” Ian replied grimly, stalking toward the door with Jordan Townsende beside him. “You go to the Willingtons’ as quickly as you can,” he instructed. “I’ll be close behind you, but I’ve a stop to make first And don’t, for God’s sake, tell Elizabeth I’m on my way.”

  Ian flung himself into his coach, snapped orders to his driver, and leaned back, counting minutes, telling himself it couldn’t possibly be going as badly for her as he feared it would. And never once did he stop to think that Jordan Townsende had no idea what motives could possibly prompt Elizabeth Cameron’s “despoiler” to be bent on meeting her at the Willingtons’ ball.

  His coach drew up before the Duke of Stanhope’s town house, and Ian walked swiftly up the front steps, almost knocking poor Ormsley, who opened the door, off his feet in his haste to get to his grandfather upstairs. A few minutes later he strode back down and into the library, where he flung himself into a chair, his eyes riveted on the clock. Upstairs the household was in an uproar as the duke called for his valet, his butler, and his footmen. Unlike Ian, however, the duke was ecstatic. “Ormsley, Ian needs me!” the duke said happily, stripping off his jacket and pulling off his neckcloth. “He walked right in here and said it.”